Known as “Tark the Shark,” Jerry Tarkanian the legendary UNLV basketball coach died earlier this morning at the age of 84. Tarkanian had been hospitalized since Monday for a respiratory ailment and infection.
Tark the Shark built the UNLV basketball program into a national power house, taking the team to four Final Fours, and winning the national championship in 1990.
Tarkanian loved to have his teams run, and was one of the first coaches to implicate the fast break offense in college basketball, something that is very common today.
Even though he had success at every stop in his collagen coaching career, also coaching at Long Beach State, and finishing his career at his alma mater Fresno State, Tarkanian had many issues with the NCAA.
He won a $2.5 million settlement after suing the organization for trying to run him out of college basketball. He was bitter to the end about the way the NCAA treated him while coaching, and carried the grudge the rest of his life.
“They’ve been my tormentors my whole life,” Tarkanian said at his retirement news conference in 2002. “It will never stop.”
His career record is 729-201, including a 509-105 records in 19 seasons at the helm of UNLV.
After being forced out of UNLV in 1992, he briefly became the Head Coach of the San Antonio Spurs. He was fired after 20 games and a 9-11 record, as he and ownership never got along.
In 30 years of coaching in college, Tark never had a losing season, and won at least 20 games every season with the exception of two seasons.
He survived by his wife, Lois, a Las Vegas city councilwoman, and four children, including Danny Tarkanian, who played point guard for his father for three years in the early 1980s.
